First to Dance
by Alaena Night
Summary: Compromise is but the sacrifice of one right or good in the hope of retaining another—too often ending in the loss of both. [Oneshot] My take on the Plants' creation. [It started with an infant in a world where gray snow fell...]


**First to Dance**

Compromise is but the sacrifice of one right or good in the hope of retaining another—too often ending in the loss of both. - **Tryon Edwards**

**Disclaimer/Notes:** _I do not own Trigun or anything about it. All the people who can claim rights to any part of it...well, they're not me. This story was inspired by and written for a prompt on Trinut. It was a huge challenge, but interesting...I couldn't get it out of my mind. The prompt? Write a story detailing the creation of the Plants. Since none of the main characters could actually have existed in this time, there will be other characters. Don't worry. No Mary Sues. Feel free to slap and flame me(in that order)if you find them, though._

* * *

**Earth, 2020**

Even as the smiling woman's footsteps faded into the sound of swirling gray snow, she whispered soft words. "You're special, Caroline... but special isn't always good. I wish things were different, my child."

The infant curled tightly into the crib as the words of comfort faded. A small clump of snowflakes drifted from the sky, settling on the silent child's face. It broke down and tiny rivulets slipped down either side of the child's nose, like tears. The baby did not move. It did not cry.

The child had never cried.

You're special.

More snowflakes, as gray as the sky, settled onto the intricate carriage and the thick pink blanket, tainting the purity of the life inside. An obscurity more smog than mist made the air impenetrable. The baby stared up at the sky, blinking as its little tongue sampled the clump of flakes that had landed on one pink lip. So young, the child didn't recognize the bitter taste of pollution.

The wind picked up, blowing more and more snow from the sky in larger and larger clumps, sending wild bursts of the soft flakes onto the blanket.

But the child hardly moved, staring to the sky and reaching a little fist out as if to touch the dark clouds. It didn't cry.

It was special.

* * *

**Earth, 2027**

"Less than a single percent...but it's amazing. They're amazing." Susan Graves let a huge smile cross her face, wiping away the tension that had rested there only moments ago. She intentionally averted her eyes away from the object she spoke of. "Its power is incredible. They may...they may actually be our answer."

Unlike Susan, her coworker stared straight on, eyes meeting those of their subject. "Not an it, not a they, Suze. You forget that they're people. Girls, boys...each one has a life, and feelings." The man was younger than her, with longish light brown hair that covered up eyes too tender and sensitive for the job they worked. "Why are we doing this?"

Susan clapped a hardened hand to the man's shoulder. "Because these children are our only way to survive. The power they wield will be either our survival or our undoing. They're hardly even human, anyway, Reece. You say that things happen for a reason, right? We're dying. This world is dying. Do you think it's a coincidence that these children were born? We'll use them as we must. It's our only choice if we want to survive."

Reece frowned, pale eyes closing. "It's wrong."

"And it's wrong to let all the other people of this planet die because you're too naive to allow a small percentage of _retarded _children to be utilized for the better of the world."

"Utilized..." Reece whispered. He shuddered. Slouching to his feet, he gave a feeble gesture. "Hey, I'm not feeling all that great. Must be the chemicals...heh, never really had a strong stomach. Finish up the test, will you? I gotta get some fresh air."

Susan smirked. "Yeah, go do that." As Reece left, he heard her voice as she spoke to the child. "Get up! Hold out your arm."

And of course the child would. She always did. She knew nothing other than to obey. It was what she had done since she was small. Reece peered into the transparent window that rimmed the girl's prison. Standing as she always did, the girl extended her arm without a word, white-blond hair sliding over icy eyes. It was the signature look of all her kind. At first glance, most people would dismiss these children as suffering from Down's syndrome. The blank look their eyes carried gave that impression, but there was much more to them. They were not unintelligent, but at the same time, they were not geniuses in any sense.

They saw and analyzed everything around them. Give them a chance and they could work the most advanced equipment. The only problem was that they did not realize what they were doing. They were a part of the world, but their minds were not in it. Emotion, pain, and physical sensations were lost on them. They were limitless, ageless, and boundless minds bound to the earth by physical bodies. They were a miracle born of a mistake.

Reece walked past the window, but his eyes were drawn to the depthless stares of each child he passed. None of them were older than six. They couldn't be. The "miracle drug" that had caused their so-called birth defect had only been released that many years ago, and banned in the following year, when a small amount of the children born from women using it had displayed these unusual traits.

Beside their apparent distance from reality, they displayed an ability to manipulate energy. That ability was what had caught the government's attention.

Many of the young women had not been able to deal with the children, and had put them up for adoption. It was not hard to guess who picked them up from there. No one missed these kids at all. The medicine that had caused what some called a mutation had truly been a miracle. A cure for cancer. But playing with the sun had only resulted in disaster. Man had thought he had defeated death, but he crashed to the ground again in defeat.

The effects of the treatments produced the children. The first ones.

Reece finally raced past the cells and stopped in a glass-encased room. Fresh air.

The air outside was dangerous, and so these purified greenhouses were the next closest thing to actual nature. Reece looked out of the glass dome. The air was dark. Those who could not afford purified air wandered outside of the dome, hacking from the damage their lungs received from the toxic air.

Would it really be best to use these children for the energy they so desperately needed? After all, they were not bound to the earth. And it was always good to make one's mistakes into victories. The children would understand. By sacrificing their freedom, they could insure the survival of the dwindling human race.

Reece shook his head, teeth grinding as the scent of freedom stole his senses. This smell of nature, this soft flow of air...this was what they would steal from the children.

On his way back, he still couldn't avoid the stares. Reece watched each one, watched as they read the sorrow in his gaze and absorbed that emotion into themselves.

All but one.

She got up from her dark corner and walked over, pressing her hand to the glass. Her skin was white-pale from lack of sunlight, but her face held a warm glow. He pressed his hand to the glass she touched, and imagined that he could feel her soft skin. Needle tracks marked up her slender arms, but she still pressed harder just as he did. She smiled, and he felt something inside of him, as if her emotion had been transferred to him.

"Don't, sir!"

Strong arms wrapped around him from behind, pulling his hands away. A guard looked at him as soon as they had backed up to the opposite wall. "Don't touch the glass! It's dangerous to make contact with them. That one especially. She's...the first one."

The guard's arms were still tight around his waist. Reece grasped them and moved away, reaching to touch the glass where the girl's hand had once been. "But she...she was looking at me. She smiled."

The guard laughed. "They don't do that. They don't feel at all. They're like batteries, and batteries don't have brains. You should know that, since you're working on them and all."

But she had smiled. She _had._

He looked over to the girl, but she was back in her corner, staring forward at nothing with her blank blue eyes.

The guard patted his shoulder and walked off. "Be careful!" he called.

The guard continued down the hall, and Reece hesitantly walked back. He wouldn't forget that girl.

* * *

Night fell and the lights were automatically dimmed to a surreal blue in the sleeping quarters. All the older people, those who had actually seen moonlight, mocked this imitation, but they still appreciated it. Reece crept out of the sleeping quarters into the light of the halls. The security was not so heavy at night, and Reece did not meet any resistance when he stepped up to the girl's cell.

She was sitting in the corner, head cocked to the side slightly, a blank and unreadable expression in her eyes. She didn't move or acknowledge his existence in any way. There was nothing in her eyes, not even exhaustion. He had not been observing the children for long, but he had never once seen one sleep.

He knocked on the glass, but the girl was not listening. She didn't move.

Reece looked at the little girl for a while longer, and though her eyes finally met his, there was no sign of the emotion he'd seen earlier. It was as if he was staring into a deep blue well.

He walked over to the cell's door, and fingered the keypad with an uncertain grasp.

Don't mess with them. They don't know right from wrong and are not aware enough to recognize and respect human life. They're dangerous.

Ignoring the remembered warnings, Reece tapped the code in anyway.

Hissing, the door permitted his entrance, and he stepped into the doorway. Cool air washed over him, sending electric shivers through his body. It was as if the air lived.

The girl looked up and leaned forward onto her arms. After a moment, she fell back again, then rocked forward. In the light, the sores on her arms from needle marks were painfully apparent. Small fingers absently caressed inflamed skin.

"H...hi." Reece walked inside and sat down on the floor, unconsciously seating himself in the far opposite corner.

The girl did not reply. Like the others, she had been pretty well cared for. They washed her and cut her hair so that it hung just above her shoulders. She was the kind of child who would grow up to be stunningly beautiful. Reece bit his lip. But she wouldn't see any of that.

"I'm sorry...for what we're doing. We're so stupid sometimes, and we make sacrifices that we'd be horrified by if we devoted much thought to them. I guess I'll be hardened to the idea once I've been here long enough, but...you're human. You know, you look just like my best friend's sister. She's eight now. She's really funny. She likes to act like she's really smart, and I give her piggybacks. Do you know what those are?"

The girl did not give any indication that she heard him at all.

"I suppose you don't. Your mom probably got rid of you soon after you were born. She was afraid of you, wasn't she?"

The girl's hands clasped together and her rocking slowed down. She looked up at the air vent above her. The cool air had condensed on the checkered metal, and a drop of water fell down, splashing onto her nose. She smiled and wiped it away, then looked up, a rapturous look on her face.

"You like that? We used to have something called rain. It was so clear, like falling diamonds. And snow...snow was beautiful. It doesn't snow much anymore."

"Sss...snow?"

Reece jumped. _Oh God, did it say something? _"Oh...oh...wow," he breathed. Not waiting for the thoughts to clarify in his head, he started speaking. "Snow is very pretty. It's sort of gray but it used to be white, like clouds. Clouds..." But she had never seen clouds. "Like...like the floors outside of the room." He rectified feebly."Except it would melt when it touched you. It was like little flakes of ice."

The girl smiled as another drop landed on her face, falling down her cheek like a teardrop.

"They looked like this. Snowflakes." He held one hand out in front of him, fingers spread, and cupped it gently with his second hand, making a crisscrossing mass of fingers.

The girl's eyes wandered curiously to his hands, but she did nothing. She nodded and started rocking again. The momentary consciousness of her surroundings began to fade from her eyes. She smiled.

It was so beautiful.

Reece inched forward until he was close enough to touch the little girl. He reached out a hand and she slowly reached out hers. He felt her warm skin, and that was the last thing he felt, because everything suddenly became warm...and then so dark.

* * *

Susan sighed and stretched. As soon as she saw the man beside her moving, she mumbled, "Idiot."

Hazy green eyes slipped open and stared blankly forward. "S—Susan? What?"

"I said you're an ass. What the hell do you think you were doing going in with one of those things? Do you know how stupid that was?"

Reece's gaze focused, and he frowned, pulling his hands from beneath a blanket to rub his eyes. It was so childish that it made Susan angry at the same time it softened her up to the guy. "What happened?" he groaned.

"You touched her. That was a bad move, ya idiot. The energy they use is dangerous. God, do you ever listen? It won't matter for long, though. We completed the first holding tank. If it works, enough energy to power this entire facility will be generated. No pollution, Reece. It'll be great. That girl will be the first. As the first born from the incident, she seems to be the strongest."

Reece sat up, sleep gone from his eyes. "What? When are you going to seal her?"

Susan clicked her fingernails together, batting at a worn cross necklace absently. "Soon enough. Now, I suppose. I was just making sure you hadn't killed yourself, so we put it off for a bit." Another soft murmur of "Idiot," placated her, and she got up. "I gotta start the process. See you later. Get some rest."

Reece scrambled up. A blush colored his face when he realized that all he was in was one of those stupid gowns. He quickly forgot, though."Why? I mean...you can't...not now!"

"It's not human, Reece. It just looks that way. Doing this is a favor. They don't want to be part of our world? That's fine. They can't hurt us through contact in those bulbs. They'll save the world, and they'll get their wish. They'll be heroes. What better life could they ask for?"

She continued to walk. By the time she finished speaking, she'd reached the door. "Don't come, Reece. You haven't hardened yourself to this kind of thing. It's for the best. We have to do things like this sometimes, for the better of everyone."

Reece grabbed at his bedside as the blood rushing to his head send shudders of weakness throughout him.

"No..." But she couldn't hear him. Susan had gone. "Don't. She's real, Suze. They're not dolls. She smiled."

Reece didn't give it a second thought. He ran out of the room. A veritable maze of white halls stretched out around him, and he took the first one he could see. This one...it would lead him to the girl.

He ran past several wandering guards and guests, and a couple of men in suits. They were probably military, more men here to look at the little miracle people. Dressed only in the flimsy gown, he hoped he'd shaken the men.

A smile crossed his face. That was childish.

When he arrived, the girl's cell was empty. Only the plaque on the door was left. "Ayita" it said. It was the name given to the child. Reece mumbled the meaning under his breath as his teeth clenched. "First to dance," he whispered.

It was so ironic.

He ran down the hall and stopped at the room where they'd brought the girl. They had taken her clothes off, and they washed her body with a stinging antiseptic. She hardly responded as they pulled tubes from the large bulb. They connected the wires to her skin, and the bulb began to hum. Everyone smiled, ignorant to the child's pain.

This was their miracle, their great day.

They didn't notice as blood welled up around the deep, digging wires. They didn't see the girl before them, uncertain of her future, struggling against her bonds. They saw an instrument, not a child. They saw an unrivaled power source, something to be feared, a toy to be played with, to be used.

The girl caught his eye as the wires contracted and pulled her into the bulb. Her slender white hands folded over each other at the wrists, palms cupped serenely, fingers spread out like angel wings.

Like a snowflake.

She smiled.

Small droplets of blood marked the floor as she was lifted over the gurney. Her eyes closed as she was drawn into the core of her new home. It lit with bright blue light.

She didn't cry.

She had never cried.

She was special.

* * *

**Author's Notes: **_I had fun writing this, but it's certainly nothing like the stuff I usually write. I feel weird not having any of the Trigun characters, but this was a challenge that kept bugging at me, and I just had to try it. I hope you enjoyed. If there are any problems or any suggestions you want to make, I'm totally open. Thanks for reading._


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